


You Can Never Go Home

by samidha



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, In more ways than one, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Sharp Teeth Gen Comment Fic Meme 2011, Trying to be the opposite of spoilery with tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 18:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11697096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/samidha
Summary: Dean can't go home. (The summary is the prompt)





	You Can Never Go Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2011 for the Sharp Teeth comment fic meme which was gen oriented. And honestly finding this creeped me out. Enjoy.

Dean wakes up in the car, his breath slipping past his teeth in little white puffs as the cold settles in around him. He is alone, and something about that shakes him to the core, loneliness and confusion seeping into his throat and chest and everything just-- feels-- _wrong_. He needs--

He shivers and pulls himself out of the driver’s seat and onto the road.

And there’s Sam, or who Sam used to be at about thirteen, holding a box of firecrackers and grinning. ”Come on, let’s go!”

The sky lights up with fire and color and the air is July-warm and sticky. Sam puts his arms tight around him, murmurs a thank you that sinks all the way into Dean’s bones, and that’s when Dean knows--

This is heaven.

The sounds of gunfire replace the noise of the firecrackers and rip him away from the memory. When he pulls himself out of the reality of the motel room, he’s back in the field but Sam is gone. Dean gets into the car and hears the radio click itself on. ”Dean,” it calls, Cas’ familiar voice breaking through the silence under static. ”Dean, stay on the road.”

”Cas, where’s Sam?”

”Stay on the road, Dean.”

So Dean drives.

He sees his brother in a flash-crackle-pop of energy out of the corner of his eye and he gets out of the car, but all that’s left is a warmth in the air--he doesn’t see Sam anywhere. 

He walks into a house, sees a family several orders of magnitude larger than his own sitting down to a meal, turkey and potatoes and beans and stuffing. A man turns toward an empty chair. ”Happy Thanksgiving, Sam,” he says, and something burns in Dean’s chest. 

Sam isn’t there.

Dean retreats into the living room of the house and flips on the stereo, the television, everything he thinks Cas may be able to reach him through. 

”Castiel,” he growls, ”Where the hell is Sam?”

No answer. Not when he bangs on the radio or flips lightning fast through the cable channels.

Nothing.

He leaves the house, gets back in the car and starts to drive again, until he sees the heat mirage of his brother again and stops the car on a dime.

He’s alone in the road.

He’s alone.

A dog comes out of nowhere and somewhere deep in his mind he hears Sam, the way his voice had followed him all those years that he was gone, at Stanford, clean and crisp and unmistakably Sam, so that sometimes Dean thought he was going crazy with it, that he needed to be committed.

”Bones! Bonesy!” Sam says now, inside Dean’s mind.

”Bones?” he tries, soft and a little hopeful, and the dog bounds to him, then continues across a parking lot and into an open motel room door.

He follows.

It’s a double with one of the beds unmade, a sea of puke green and brown covering the walls, matched to the bedspreads, and everything smells of mold and dirt. The floor is littered with empty Funyuns bags and soda cans, and Dean sees an army duffel in the corner, a dog-eared copy of To Kill a Mockingbird on the bedside table. A newspaper sits beside it, declaring the date and the absolute latest in Flagstaff news. Pieces of the puzzle slam into place hard and fast. Dean knows where he is--when he is, and indignation flares all through him, anger and age-old fear. 

There’s so much he wants to say, but he hasn’t got words. And who would he say them to? The Sam in his head? Proof he is one hundred percent batshit?

No.

There’s no Sam. Sam is nowhere. He’s alone with all of his rage and grief and confusion.

Alone.

Out of nowhere, something grabs hold of his arm. He hurtles through space, out of the motel room and through a door that slams shut behind him.

”Compadre!” Ash calls, and it is unmistakably him, mullet and all.

Dean only has one question. It comes out with all the force of his bitter, miserable solitude.

”Where’s Sam?”

Ash has no answer. His silence joins the sea of Dean’s anger and fear and listlessness.

”I thought he would be with you,” Ash finally comes up with, and-- great, sure, yeah, fucking perfect. So did he.

”I mean, you are soul-mates. Usually he _is_ \--”

Dean flashes on Alastair’s face, grinning open with shining rows and rows of teeth and he thinks fondly of the possibility of slitting Ash’s useless throat, really making a project of it, like he would have below, blood and skin covering the glint of the knife sheathed to his leg.

”No point,” the Sam in his head says. ”He’s already dead.”

”That’s nice, Ash,” Dean growls at him and his soul-mate bullshit. ”Doesn’t give me Sam.”

”No, I guess not,” Ash says. Dean slams his way out of the would-be Roadhouse, Ash calling after him, ”Be careful out there!” as the door swings shut.

He’s alone again, standing out on a road with no Impala in sight anywhere. And still no Sam.

”Where are you?” he screams out into the empty air. ”God dammit, where in hell _are you_?

Nowhere. Sam is nowhere.

”This isn’t funny, Cas, get me out of here.” He screams at the sky and the sky answers with only heat and silence.

He sets off walking back the way he came, straining to catch sight or sound of Sam, even the stupid corner-of-his-eye Sam who isn’t real. Soul-mate or not, Dean knows what he needs, knows that he doesn’t have it.

He walks and he walks and he walks until he starts to run. He waits for any sign, even words of comfort from the Sam in his head that is really him just trying, trying so damn hard to fill the places where he always felt ripped apart and oozing since the night Sam walked out that door and left Dean alone.

_You walk out that door, don’t you ever come back._

Anger and fear turn to rage so hot he imagines it blackening his insides as it burns through him. ”Damn you! How dare you just-- leave me here?” Dean is running, running through the same sticky heat, surrounded by miles and miles of nothing. ”Damn all of you!” 

He screams so hard something pops in his jaw, but there is no answer.

Just endless miles and miles of nothing.

Dean keeps running. What the hell else is there to do? Where the hell else can he go?

He follows the road and he waits for the empty places inside of him to fill with something, anything.

In his head, Sam--what sounds like his Sam--laughs long and low. ”Good luck with that.” The barb goes deep and he wonders not for the first time why the fuck he is the way he is.

He keeps running.

Finally he reaches the field again. There’s a stitch in his side and his feet are aching. He’s had plenty of training in running in his life but it feels like he’s been running for years when he finally stops.

No Impala. No more fireworks than what sits in the box that Sam dug out of the trunk, straight out of the past. Without that box sitting near the edge of the field, he never would have been able to find the place.

He stands on the road and he bellows for all he’s worth. ”Sam! Sam, please! Are you here?”

Sammy slips into existence, flickering like a ghost at first, then slowly solidifying.

”Duh, Dean. Come on, let’s go.’

Thank fuck. He’s solidifying. It’s Sam and he’s solid.

Dean walks up to the edge of the field and hits an invisible wall.

”Uh.”

”Come on, Dean!” 

Dammit. He knows what’s on the other side of the barrier. There’s fire in the sky, heat and colors and love and Sam and--

He knows what’s there and he can’t--

”They say you can never go back again, you know?” the Sam in his head says.

”Come on, Dean!”

He tries to push his way through the barrier, gets a running start and everything, but hitting the wall with force just pushes him back, hard, tumbling onto blacktop. He feels road rash bloom on his palms.

The little boy stands over him. ”Come on, Dean,” he tries again, his face just the same, just the same, as if he can’t even really see what just happened to his brother.

Like he’s just another mirage.

Dean thinks of the kid’s arms around him, solid and real and home and safe and heaven, fucking heaven, and he aches for that one perfect moment. Maybe if he--

He stands up, experimentally puts his arms out, but the younger Sam doesn’t respond.

He has to play the whole memory again. He has to get into the field.

The air is so muggy and thick around him. He tries pinwheeling his arms to get some space, shifts left and right and just hits a thickness of energy. Nowhere to go. Nothing to see. He can pace in a straight line between the edge of the field to where Sam is standing but he can’t engage the memory beyond--

”Come on, let’s go!” Sammy crows cheerfully, but not without some impatience.

”Uh. Sammy?”

”Come on, let’s go!”

”I can’t--”

_They say you can never go back._

He feels a whoosh, like the air just after Cas flies in under his radar, quick as a blink. Sammy is suddenly two steps to the left and approaching him again, as if the past minute or so hasn’t even happened.

”Come on!” Sam shouts, and then he flickers out of existence and flickers back in two steps back.

Quick as a blink

”Come on!”

”Sammy, I can’t--”

”Come here!”

Sammy slides closer to him, as if the very air is pushing them together. He looks Dean right in the eye. ”I said come here, Dean,” he whispers low.

Sam is close enough already that Dean can feel his breath on his face, sweet and hot.

”Come here.”


End file.
